


been alone so long (feel like i'm on the run)

by maharieel



Category: Cyberpunk 2077 (Video Game)
Genre: F/M, Hurt/Comfort, Love Confessions, slight angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-10
Updated: 2021-02-10
Packaged: 2021-03-16 13:00:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,807
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29332689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/maharieel/pseuds/maharieel
Summary: He’s a dangerous kind of beautiful, spread out beside her in the neon afterglow of Night City. A fresh cigarette itching to be lit. Finite, a quick release. The burn of smoke down her throat, caught in her lungs, the remnants twisting into her cells and rotting there. She’d never smoked much, before Johnny. Never traced the jawline of the person twisted vice-like around her in bed either. A soft kind of poison that she can’t bring herself to live without.(or, v and johnny navigate this newfound thing called love)
Relationships: Johnny Silverhand/Female V, Johnny Silverhand/V
Comments: 2
Kudos: 39





	been alone so long (feel like i'm on the run)

**Author's Note:**

> recommended listening: cringe (stripped) by matt maeson

The scratch of Johnny’s chest hair catches on her cheekbone as Delaney shifts her head from where it had fallen against his chest during the night. Their legs had become haphazardly tangled together in a twist of blankets at some point, the cold metal of his arm resting tight between her shoulder blades. Johnny snores a little. Delaney’s arm tingles on the edge of numbness. The room smells of Chinese takeout and sex.

Delaney shifts to push the hair off his forehead. It’s got long, too long; she would’ve offered to cut it weeks ago if she didn’t like the look of it tied at the nape of his neck so much. A stray mole in the crease of his mouth catches her eye as he stirs.

He’s a dangerous kind of beautiful, spread out beside her in the neon afterglow of Night City. A fresh cigarette itching to be lit. Finite, a quick release. The burn of smoke down her throat, caught in her lungs, the remnants twisting into her cells and rotting there. She’d never smoked much, before Johnny. Never traced the jawline of the person twisted vice-like around her in bed either. A soft kind of poison that she can’t bring herself to live without.

“Go back to sleep,” Johnny mumbles, this side of incoherent, face scrunching as he shifts to free his arm where it’s trapped between her and the mattress. Delaney watches the hair she’d pushed away fall back between his eyes.

The too-full space around her heart itches, aches. A fire ignites somewhere behind her eyes. He is so beautiful, like a healing bruise, and her chest hurts at the sight of him.

Delaney waits until he’s settled, waits with her frantically beating heart stuck in her throat. His arm loosely cradles her shoulders; she slips out and away from it, his body inching into the dip she’s left in the mattress like a moth to a flame. The noodles they’d shared hours before tangle in her gut and she wants to hack them up all over the linoleum.

 _I’m in love with him_.

The thought rattles around in her head as she slips from the bed and slides to the floor next to it, the metal of the bedframe scraping against the bare skin of her back. Nibbles perks up, eyes pinpricks of light in the gloom. He settles cautiously beside her as she hugs her knees against her chest. The purring makes her calf almost vibrate.

 _I’m in love with him_.

A hovercraft rushes by outside, the neon of Trauma Team bathing the apartment in red. The end of an argument echoes down the hallway outside. She can hear Johnny groaning above and behind her, can hear the mattress creak as he turns to find it empty. The space where his arm had been wrapped around her shoulders feels suddenly frigid. Heat burns behind her eyes, her heart caught again in an expanse of code and darkness. Pain, blooming from the port behind her ear.

_I’m in –_

“Why are you crying?”

His voice startles her enough that both her and Nibbles jump. The skin around her knees stings where she’s left nail-shaped indents. A new advertisement blinks along the megatower opposite their building; Delaney watches the pixelated woman dance to a tune she can’t hear through the glass and distance, the blue of her skirt blinding in the pre-dawn darkness.

“V?”

She can’t look at him. Her cheeks burn, a betrayal. Delaney rubs at them furiously as her knees begin to tremble. Nibbles meows.

“Silent treatment doesn’t look good on you, sweetheart.”

Johnny is sitting on the edge of the bed. His calf nudges her shoulder and she wants to flinch away, wants to twist herself into something small enough that she can drift away in the gutter and be forgotten. Except, no, her heart screams at the mere _thought_ of it, of running and vanishing and being forgotten like trash in the rain. She bangs her head back against the bed, a frustrated sob breaking free before she can stop herself and her cheeks heat again because Johnny is _right there_ , _staring_ at her, and she is crying like a fucking _child_.

“Delaney, what –”

She startles to her knees. “Shut up!”

His hair is tucked roughly behind his ears, sleep still heavy in the corners of his eyes. Lights from outside dance along his bare chest. Johnny stares at her, halfway between bewildered and incredulous, reeling back on his hands.

“Just,” she starts, stops, gulps down air as she shoves herself to her feet unsteadily. “Just be quiet, Johnny. I’m fucking fine.”

A scoff. But he stays quiet.

“I just need a smoke,” she whispers, scrubbing at her eyes again.

Delaney looks at him, where he’s still balancing on the edge of the bed, where he’s still got her lip gloss smudged over his hip bones and inner thighs, where the smell of her shampoo still drifts from him in waves. He is too much. She stumbles to the window, to put her eyes anywhere but him.

“Speaking from experience, but a smoke’s not gonna help.”

She glares at the skyline. “I don’t have time for you to be a smartass right now, Johnny.”

“And I don’t have time for you to be a closed off bitch, but here we are.”

Delaney storms towards him before she can stop herself. “Fuck off! I don’t owe you anything.”

“You’re right, you don’t,” he snaps, standing, and the fight seems to slip from his shoulders as he does it. His organic hand twitches as if to reach for her, but rests on his hip instead. “Look I just . . . fuck, I’ve literally been inside your head and I’ve barely seen you cry twice in your fucked up life, okay? Pardon me for trying to be a decent person.”

The flow of tears gets stronger at that. Delaney stares at his bare chest and the skin that’s a little too pristine to possibly be real (his genetic code only remembering so much). Her lungs feel too small, too full, smoke and bile and air caught up together.

“V,” Johnny mutters. His organic hand reaches for her, courage found, and the warmth of it against the fluttering pulse at her wrist makes her sigh. “Delaney.”

The world feels suddenly so heavy. “I’m sorry for yelling.”

“’S alright.”

His eyes glow in the neon reflecting from outside, darker specks among the brown. She wants to kiss him but bites down on her lip instead. The taste of salt lingers.

“What’s this about, hm?” Johnny says, metal thumb wiping away the tears that won’t stop fucking pouring from her eyes.

Delaney closes her eyes at the contact, at the warmth that radiates from him. Sometimes she grieves the months he was a mess of code, if only to save herself having to explain the jumbled thoughts that pool in her head. But then she remembers the feel of his skin on hers, remembers the comfort of being able to look him in the eye without the glitch of technical static. A miracle, really, that he is holding her right now. She doesn’t want him to let go, even if it terrifies her, even if it hurts.

“Don’t laugh,” she whispers.

She can feel the smile on his face. “No promises.”

“I think I’m in love with you.”

The hand that’s running along her cheekbone stills. Her heart aches, a fresh bruise pressed under her eye in the shape of his fingerprint. She wants to pull away, wants him to crush her to pieces. She tugs her wrist free to hug her herself anyway, as if that will save her now from the all-consuming need for him that pulses through her like poison injected into her bloodstream. Irreversible, terminal. Her whole soul burns for him.

So much of her youth was lost to darkened rooms, abandoned basements. Discarded, a play thing brought out only when needed.

When she opens her eyes, Johnny is so bright she might fizzle to ash at his feet.

“I love you,” she starts, words falling over each other now to distract from the look Johnny’s giving her. “And it hurts so fucking much. But when I try to ignore this ache in me, it just gets worse. And I don’t know what to do.”

Johnny reaches for her, half blind. “V . . .”

“You don’t have to say it back. Just please don’t leave.”

His hands are on the back of her neck now. Vice-like. Trembling. Delaney’s never seen such terror in his eyes. A breath heaves out of him, then, “I won’t.”

“Say it back?”

“Leave.”

She laughs, near delirious. “You’ve left before.”

Johnny tugs her closer, brings his forehead to hers. His hair falls in his face, itches at her nose. “And I was a cunt before. Confused. You . . . you terrified me.”

“Johnny Silverhand, scared?”

He closes his eyes, smile fracturing the serious look on his face. “Oh, so now she’s a bitch?” A pause. “I really don’t want to fuck this up, V. Not again. Not like everything else.”

Delaney grips his wrists where they’re still clutching at her jaw, as if she might vanish in a glitch of code before his eyes. His pulse pounds as hard as hers; the sound is music to her ears. She sighs, tension bleeding from her. Johnny bends to crush his lips against hers.

He tastes like smoke, and tequila, and the shitty takeout they’d had for dinner. His hands bury into her hair, knot in it and tug hard enough to pull her mouth open wider. She swallows the content moan he makes when she bites at his lip. A tremor runs through her knees and lower back; his hands on her neck keep her upright.

Delaney pulls free with a soft gasp, forehead falling to rest on his collarbone. Johnny’s arms encircle her shoulders easily, almost without thought. He buries his face in her pink hair. Delaney wallows in the feel of him, bare and warm and enveloping. She could drown in him.

The sun peaks over the Night City skyline in the distance, light slowly creeping into the apartment from between the skyscrapers around them. Delaney sags against Johnny, beyond exhausted.

“C’mon,” he says into her hair.

She lets him guide her back to bed, hands loosely gripping her bare hips. When he shoves her down first, only to lie splayed atop her stomach, she lets him, the weight of him spread between her legs a welcome comfort. A headache blooms in the back of her head, eyes heavy from tears. Delaney runs her fingers through his too-long hair as she sinks back into her pillow. Johnny rests his head between her breasts, hands wrapped around her middle.

“Love you too, sweetheart.”

They sleep until sunlight glares through the window.

**Author's Note:**

> i'm in so deep for these idiots, they've brought me out of a 12 month writing hiatus.


End file.
